Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation (18 page)

In San Francisco, you see real poverty every day. What’s more, you talk to it, engage
with it, and occasionally step over a running stream of its urine as you hustle to
work each morning. It is a part of life there, like biodiesel and vegan pot cookies.
It is just
something that you do.

And do you must. When I worked there, in my first job out of college, I made very
little money. So little, in fact, that when I would get paid every two weeks, most
of my money was gone before I even deposited it. Each pay period I would have twenty
dollars with which to recreate. That’s right. One crisp, disposable twenty, to do
with whatever I wished, for the following two weeks. Which, it turns out, wasn’t very
much.

The twenty was usually rationed out early in the pay period for lattés, which at the
time were a new and heady import from the mysterious continent of Europe. Managed
properly, a single double latté could be made to last a day, and occasionally two.
This involved the judicious application of office coffee once the beverage had been
drunk down somewhat, followed by office creamer, sugar packets, and periodic strategic
microwaving. Thus handled, my morning latté could last all day and be riding home
with me on the bus at night, as steaming hot and (somewhat) delicious as the moment
it had been delivered some twelve hours afore.

I was very good at being thrifty, at stretching my money, at making every dollar work.

That is, until I came in contact with a homeless person.

There is nothing like another human being lying on the ground in the cold to make
me want to turn my pockets inside out like a virgin frat boy at a strip club. I feel
crazy. I feel sad inside. I want to take them home with me and feed them Stouffer’s
Turkey Tetrazzini. This is a compulsive reaction, and it is unavoidable. If I see
a homeless person, I
have
to give them money.

You can see how this would be a problem in a city where homeless people litter the
street like sleepy dandelions.

After several weeks of navigating the gauntlet that was the two blocks between my
subway stop and my office while choking back tears and the occasional murmured “good
lord, the humanity,” I stopped buying coffee and started packing my pockets with small
bills and “spare change.”
⁵
Rather than feeling horrible at the fact that I had food and a guy on the corner
seemed to be eating three-day old Spanakopita from the remains of a sock, I coughed
up money to whomever asked. This saved me the overwhelming wave of guilt that was
sure to ruin my afternoon and weekend, and saved him from having to call me a stingy
cunt at the top of his lungs. So it worked out well for both of us.

Before you give me a big lecture about how giving a homeless person money on the street
doesn’t
really
change their situation in life, I would respectfully like to say, shut up. I know
that. I know many people on the street have alcohol and drug addictions and will turn
right around and use that money to get high. And even if they do use the money to
eat, it’s not like they can carve the middle out of that scone they bought and live
in it, you self-satisfied little prick. I
know
that. That’s not the point.
⁶
The point is to be kind in the moment, to treat another person who is looking you
in the eye and asking for a little help with respect, if you can manage it. Plenty
of people treat homeless people like they don’t exist at all. Just acknowledging them
and being kind, just
seeing
them, can be enough to make them feel as if they are not alone.

I believe in being kind in the moment. I can’t end homelessness. I get that. But I
can give a single person some brief relief from a brutish, unkind, and very chilly
existence, if only for a moment.
⁷
Or, more specifically, relief from a life that is driven completely by concern over
when, where, and how to pee, something I can relate to greatly, having attended college.

I quickly acquired a coterie of homeless regulars, including one guy in particular.
We’ll call him Mitch.

Mitch camped out in front of the coffee shop-slash-bakery across the street from my
office building, and from the first moment I saw him, it was abundantly apparent that
Mitch was different. Open, engaging, charming, funny even, he had us suit-clad guilt-ridden
workaday suckers eating out of the palm of his hand. He was articulate. Self-possessed.
He had jokes. His cardboard sign, renewed daily, alternated between some wry, self-aware
comment about him needing money for a drink and a profound Buddhist quote.
⁸
He would engage passersby for hours on end, delighting them with his knowledge of
current events and his understanding of world affairs. Even when he would sink into
a funk (totally understandable, since he was living on the street), he would still
find time to give a grateful smile or wave to anyone who would drop money into his
cup. He was a model hobo. Absolutely perfect.

Everybody loved him. After bending to give him money, you would stand and smile at
the person next to you, who had coincidentally also just given him money (he was that
beloved), both of you now feeling that somehow you had made the world just a tiny
bit better in that brief, shining moment. The walk to work was made better by passing
him on the street, by seeing his smile, and by thinking a) this is truly a great world,
where someone in his situation can still be so upbeat, and b) what a great light he
is, that he still finds energy to share his joy with others, and c) holy fucking shit,
I am late for work. He was wonderful, and it was a pleasure to give up my morning
latté so that Mitch could take my money, pool it with a bunch of other people’s money,
and do whatever it is that homeless people do with their cash at the end of the day.
⁹

And then, one day, he was gone.

No explanation. No note. Of course, we all expected the worst, we fatuous yuppie commuters.
Where was our hobo? Where was our reason for feeling morally superior? Where was our
Mitch?

We never saw him again.

After several months of Mitch’s absence, we slowly moved on, in the way that people
do. Human beings possess a unique capacity for letting their concern for others fade
quickly in favor of other critical worries, such as what kind of sushi would be at
the salad bar that day for lunch, or when shoulder pads might come back into style.
But I couldn’t entirely forget him, and I would occasionally ask people around the
office if they knew what had happened to him. And one day, finally, someone breathlessly
reported that they found out that Mitch had passed away. They weren’t sure, but they
believed it was substance-related.

It wasn’t a surprise, but it was shocking nonetheless. Mitch was our golden boy. Mitch
was special. Why I thought he was saving the money he received for an apartment and
two weeks at a yoga retreat instead of booze or drugs, I have no idea. This was all
part of the illusion, an illusion I had created to assuage my own bullshit guilt.
I couldn’t get entirely comfortable with the idea that Mitch was truly in crisis,
so I made up my own backstory, one that made me feel comfortable with our daily transactions.
Mitch was there because he wanted to be. Mitch was a gentleman wanderer. And I was
his venture capitalist, a floor-level investor in his quixotic quest.

But that was fantasy. In reality, Mitch was homeless, struggling with addiction, living
day to day in a world fraught with danger. A few bucks and a smile didn’t change that
at all.

I felt immediately that I, with my proffered dollars and friendly asides, had paved
the way to Mitch’s demise. Somehow I had taken this special man and led him down the
primrose path. By gleefully giving him money, instead of ignoring his pleas, or pushing
him to get professional help, I felt I’d enabled him—I’d helped put him in the bottle,
or the bag, or whatever substance it was that killed him. And I felt guilty, and helpless,
and awful, and small, and all the things one feels when one grows up and realizes
that the world’s problems are sprawling and complex and utterly massive, and can’t
be solved with spare change or good intentions, and that trying to romanticize the
life of a man who has no home is a naïve recipe for tears.

That doesn’t mean the world’s problems can’t be solved, or that we shouldn’t try for
fear of disappointment or loss. Nothing great was ever done by someone who let a fear
of failing stop them. But it’s going to take much, much more than a handful of coins
and a smug sense of false intimacy with a single homeless man who was clearly extraordinary
but suffering nonetheless from the same devastating problems as so many others who
struggle to survive on the street.

Later I found out, from another member of Mitch’s fan club who had done some investigating,
that Mitch was, indeed, a very special homeless person. In his earlier life, he had
been a scientist, an Ivy League graduate. This explained his charm and intelligence,
his sophistication and manners. He had lived a “normal” life, until mental illness,
addiction, and other unknown tragedies drove him into the street.

And so, I suppose, Mitch was just like other homeless people—like all people in general.
Flawed, imperfect, in need of our compassion, in need of more help than just financial.
And even with exactly the right kind of help, with the right intentions and in the
right amounts, Mitch may have still been destined for an unavoidable and tragic end.

While it sometimes felt futile, I didn’t stop giving homeless people money. I hope
I never will. You don’t give up trying to help just because one gesture of kindness
doesn’t work out the way you had hoped. You keep at it, because kindness is its own
reward. It has to be. And inasmuch as your kindness may or may not transform the lives
of others, it will transform your own without fail.

Since I was little, I have wanted to save things. I am not likening rescuing a baby
bunny rabbit to trying to save a homeless guy. For one thing, you can’t keep a homeless
guy in a shoebox. But I am saying that it is important to tap into your own compassion,
and never let that capacity for kindness die, no matter how many times it breaks your
heart.

Or takes your money and spends it on booze. Delicious, delicious booze.

Hey. Spot me a twenty.

( 20 )

The First Time I Did Standup

“Search not a wound too deep lest thou make a new one.”
—
T
HOMAS
F
ULLER

“If I think about this fully, I will piss myself in fear.”
—
A
ISHA
T
YLER

There’s
an adage, pretty well known, that warns “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” My mother
loves a cute variation on that phrase that admonishes “Fuck with it till it breaks!”
She never misses an opportunity to gleefully use that phrase. She is like a sweet,
adorable trucker.

That adage has been a governing principle of my adult life. If I find myself feeling
comfortable, if things seem to be going
too
well, I immediately feel panic, and am gripped by an overwhelming urge to leap up
and go running down the street screaming like a banshee. I like things to be difficult,
insurmountably punishing even. And if my life is feeling too easy, it’s time to start
breaking shit. The charming thing about me is that I never saw a good situation I
wasn’t willing to completely fuck up.

After college, I was incredibly lucky to get what, by any set of measures, was a perfect
first gig: working for an environmental non-profit organization in my beloved hometown
of San Francisco. I had wrested my degree from the reluctant jaws of my alma mater—major
in political science with a minor in environmental studies—so this was my bullseye:
working for an organization that bought up unused urban land and converted it into
parks for communities that lacked safe, green places to play. We actually
made
parks for inner-city kids. I mean, could we be any more selfless? I had landed my
dream job.

Now, I realize this is not a dream job for anyone who wants to do stuff like make
money or get laid or not smell like wheat grass, but, for me, it was awesome. I really
did care about the environment, I really did love my hometown, and, even more than
that, I really,
really
needed a job.
¹
This position hit all three of those criteria, so I was thrilled. This was all I
had ever dreamed of. The only thing that would have made it more perfect would have
been an unlimited supply of free office chocolate and a desk made of angora sweaters
for snuggly lunchtime micro-naps. I showed up for my first grownup job all bright-eyed
and bushy-tailed, my tummy full of bubbles made of hope and angel’s wings.

My tummy angel bubbles popped pretty fucking quickly.

If you haven’t yet noticed, working sucks. Unless you are a racecar driver or an astronaut
or Beyoncé, working is completely and utterly devoid of awesome. It is hard, it lasts
all day, the lighting is generally fluorescent,
²
and, apparently, drinking at your desk is frowned upon.
³
If you ever needed to ruin someone’s fun, I mean really poop a party, just move things
to the workplace. Fun terminated.

This particular workplace had a very specific set of elements
not
going for it. First, it was a not-for-profit organization, which I realized they
took
very
literally after I saw my first paycheck. I made so very little money that I would
plan large parts of my workday around opportunities to scavenge for food leftover
from office meetings and departure parties. My favorite thing to do was to plan a
birthday celebration. It didn’t matter if it was actually someone’s birthday—if I
could find a way to wrangle a supermarket sheet cake out of those tight-fisted bastards,
I was doing it. A third of a leftover cake was like four meals for me. I was desperate
and borderline diabetic, but I did what I had to.